


Diving Deep

by Omorka



Category: Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:16:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/pseuds/Omorka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even after Mount Doom, the Ring still has its hold one on creature.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Diving Deep

**Author's Note:**

> Canon character death, book continuity (although in this case I think it doesn't actually matter).

It was cool enough, now, that sometimes he remembered the water. Leaping off the rock into the dark, cool pools, and the grip of a squirming fish. Or before that, how he'd slip from the coracle, or off the raft, or sometimes just from the river's edge, and swim, laughing, playing, touching wet skin. Sometimes he dared to think of the ocean; though he'd never seen it, once or twice in tunnels far below, he'd smelled it, salt and strange fish and seaweed, at an end of the tunnel he'd never go for fear of the Faces, yellow and white.

He supposed that now he needn't fear the Faces. The last dive hadn't been into water, no, Precious, not cool, clear water. Like a few, it had been with something he loved, needed, clutched tight and wouldn't let go. Like one other, it had been with something whose death he had caused. Holding too tight.

And still the Precious held him.

It was dead, yes, love, it had died when the heat finally melted it; he'd been cooked before that. The stories they sang while the fishing nets were hung out and repaired said that when you died, you were supposed to cross the Sea and then go onward. He wasn't sure how you crossed the sea when you were dead, if you went in a boat like the elves did or if the spirits of the dead just flew. He wondered whether Deagol had crossed the sea.

The Precious hadn't gone far, certainly not to the sea. It had died, run a little bit, and then stayed, a streak of bright gold fused into the dark, ropy lava rock that had been blown from the mountain like a nice, juicy fish leaping from the water. And what was left of his bones, a film of ash, had gone with it. And here it was.

And here he was, yes, Precious. Here, buried at the foothills of what was once Mount Doom, in the rock. Even in death, Precious, it held him.

The water fell from above, now, from where the Faces dwelled. He wondered when it would reach him, whether he would ever surface.


End file.
